The World’s Largest Landfill

Photo Source: kqedquest

Floating just east of the Hawaiian Islands is the world’s largest landfill known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  Estimated to be twice the size of Texas, this mass of trash is doing incalculable damage to marine life.  Recently featured on Oprah (video), Nightline (video) and NPR (article), the lethal combination of man’s disposable goods and the forces of nature are no longer an environmental secret.

Most of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is comprised from land-based trash.  This trash (about 80% plastic) comes from disposable goods from all around the world.  Plastic in the streets gets washed into storm drains and then drains into rivers, which is then dumped into the ocean.  Nature takes over from there, capturing this excess garbage into the North Pacific Gyre.  The natural ocean current swirls the trash into a vortex that brings the garbage together in one area creating the world’s largest landfill.  As the landfill endlessly floats along the Pacific Ocean’s currents, larger trash items (like rope and nets) clump together while other less sturdy items (like plastic) break down into small pieces creating a “plastic soup” that marine life mistakes for food.  The end result of this disaster is that the plastic in our oceans is now appearing on the insides of some of the seafood we could eat.

The moral of this tragic tale is quite simple:  properly dispose of your trash.  Just because an item is thrown away and out of your sight does not mean that it has disappeared.  All trash goes somewhere, whether it’s a landfill on land or in the sea.  So please try to limit the disposable items in your daily routine and properly recycle every item you can.